Beyond the inevitable or faux nostalgia, the first half of this video is several fold more complicated than many bottom of the barrel full length films these days. I realize that statement makes it seem like I listen to Elvis Costello and the Unattractives, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Does it make me a bad person if I know someone that owns the actually karaoke disc for this song (not just the video, which is in the form of a karaoke video)? Does it make me an even worse person if I’m the one that bought it? Sometimes you needs some “woos” and “ooh ooh oohs.” Seriously, eat it if you are not down with the derivative and awesome stylings of the Dandy Warhols. Marginally not safe for work- the clip is unedited, and I think I saw someone’s doodle!

As much as you want to hate them. As much as they are over. Is conversely as much as they are awesome, unless you think they are awesome, then they still are. Outcome oriented opposite day. Get used to it. The all-occasions closing credit/outro song for your tasteful, yet short running television show/straight to video masterpiece. Fill in the black for pretentious analogies. At least Marc Hogan doesn’t write for this blog. Moron.

Do I need to even explain myself on this one? I imagine Gordon Lightfoot squaring off against Bon Scott in hell, but with the tiniest most imperceptible shrug of his Canadian shoulders, Bon Scott explodes, defeated by Gordo. Then Satan bows his head in shame.

First through third of all, Angus Young is totally insane. Fourth and Sixth, Bon Scott looks like an odd cross between Luke Wilson and maybe Charles Manson (the eyes?). Fifth, this song is total bar rock, and it doesn’t even waste its time being the usual AC/DC sleazy. The kind that makes you actually consider banging your head, the riffs aren’t really just guitar- they’re more like blunt force shots to the gut. The older I get, the more I relish old, old AC/DC when it comes on the wiener rock station. From 1978’s Powerage I believe. Bon doesn’t really rock the mic, but his second hand Freddie Mercury moves are more than enough because Angus is a buzzsaw up there on stage. Yikes. Angus looked 40 when he was 20 and he probably looks a billion when he’s a million. As discussed previously, the guy just craps awesome chunky rock riffs. This may make me uncool. Good! Eat the DC, cobags!

I can’t wait for the White Stripes backlash. This will make it easier for me to piss you off. Consider this post the first of many “touch touch touch touch touch I’m touching you” (you: “don’t touch me. you’re on my side of the car”) in the backseat of the station wagon while our parents are dragging us to Craters of the Moon National Monument. I still like them and dedicated followers of fashion cannot dissuade me.

Sometimes you just gotta go with it. The song that most predicts “Stairway to Heaven” and every other electrified rock cheese ballad to infinity. This is not to say that it isn’t awesome. What are you going to do? How can we be immeasurably cooler than you all the time?

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees”

The crash on January 29, 1948 killed 28 Mexican farm workers who were being deported, and 4 Americans who were flight crew and security. News coverage gave the names of the Americans, but never identified any of the Mexicans.

The performance is by Arlo Guthrie & Emmylou Harris, and was recorded for the 1988 Woody Guthrie/Leadbelly tribute video A Vision Shared.

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” — Copyright notice on a songbook Guthrie distributed in the 1930s (see).

First off. And second. How is Brian May’s Louis Quatorze hairdo so appropriate? Also, he a guitarist that bothered to create his own sound, even though it really is only window dressing for Freddie’s unstoppable theatrics. Somehow this is the leanest and meanest possible version of total rock excess there can possible be. It is both stripped-down and baroque. Thus, the oxymoron that is the genius of Queen.

By far my fave Missing Persons tune, yes it is 80’s New Wave, a touch of Blondie, ice barbie instead of ice princess, but also more than a shade of Gary Numan. In fact, an MP-Gary Numan duet would be awesome. The intro makes you feel like there’s a person there, warmer than the usual Gary Numan toaster sex tune, but then the slightly metallic tinged vocals say HUMAN-ROBOT hybrid and it is awesome.

Like ELO and Queen and the Rockford Files all in one tasty Hot Pocket of awesomeness. Let’s just say you could kiss that one button on the 8-track gah-bye. This song would make the dentist a good time. Everybody should love this song. Even total cobags. And I just realized who Cornershop stole a particular riff from. That song tomorrow.

I am ready to take the heat on this one. I think this song is the moment where Courtney Love was on the fence between being a sad cartoon and an actual person. All the bad things were already there and you could argue that she was destined to her sad fate from the beginning, maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the attention, the suicide, it doesn’t matter really. In this song there was the appearance that it could go another way. And I will just come out and say it. This is a really good song.

I never understood the backlash against the Strokes. Yes, they are popular and routinely hailed by useless emus as being the saviours of rock and roll. Whatever. Their music rocks and is extremely tight. It’s basically hook after hook and before you know what hits you, you’re grooving to the music.

Their newest CD, First Impressions of the Earth is solid through and through. There are perhaps some overly ambitious tracks, and it plays a little less like a greatest hits CD than Is This It, but it features some tremendous tunes.

Juicebox is probably the most distinctive single from the new CD. It plays half like an ode to Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme and half like an ode to Rush. I think the Rush part is better. In fact, the chorus of the song, which is sweeping and Radioheadly dramatic, almost borders on prog. But fear not, the song is not proggy. It rocks with an effective repeating couplet structure.

The video is interesting. I think they thought that David Cross alone would make the introduction ridiculously funny, but it’s too cliched. Stroke performing Juicy Juice. How droll. Maybe that’s the point, though. Everything in the video is cliched, especially the hot girl-on-girl action and the, um, doggie action. Still, it’s a rock video at heart. If it weren’t for the Strokes backlash, I think more people would have listened to the new CD, and would better appreciate its high quality.

Obviously AC-DC revel in a cess pool or “retarded teenage sexuality” but get this clip, the boys do the whole U2 “we’re on a flatbed doing a video” like 500 years prior and they don’t even give a sh*t about getting people out for the shoot. They make sure they get some bagpipers, natch, but adoring public? Nah, they’ll just meet ’em at the party later. RAWK and you love it as Angus sledgehammers your brain out with what should be third grade crunch, except why didn’t you think of them first? Oh yeah, he craps out chunkier simple-minded riffs that you ever could, you’d need a lobotomy to reach his level of primal riffage. And he does it in his sleep. Yes, the band has two songs, four hundred versions of essentially “Highway to Hell” and two versions of “Who Made Who”, the second one being “Thunderstruck.” It matters not one bit.

We detailed a party gone horribly awry, but we now can give visual evidence.

fulsome, locked in the guest bedroom, bemoans his fate. Unable to slip out, his attempts at killing the party with Death Cab for Cutie and Pictionary are to no avail. The rabble will not be soothed, nay, they clamor for blood. Saddened by his plight, he breaks out his treasure. A duct-taped Sony Sports Walkman with Auto-reverse (natch) and a mix tape from her- you know, the one with slightly mainstream but great taste, she who knew what a B-side was- she knew that fulsome would appreciate this, the third single from Songs from The Big Chair, and appreciate it unironically. See, she knew he thought of the video, placing himself in the role of the shy library patron unable to get up his courage. Little did Fulsome know the librarian was really teh l4m3, but little did fulsome’s crush know he secretly thought of the monkey.

Everything above is true. I will add that even though the band hired some stiff on keyboards to make them seem more rugged, does he even seem like he is in the same band? The other guy, not the lead singer, is there some reason he’s done up like the woman from Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” video? Oh yeah, it’s the awesome 80s. Sigh. I don’t want to go too overboard, but this song was Top 10 on the charts. Comparing it to the fractured and market researched, plastic pitch-shifted chunky farts that ooze over the airwaves today makes you think twice about a decently crafted toss-off third single from an arty pop English band.